Bifurcation analysis of a conceptual model for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation ...
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) distributes heat and salt into the Northern Hemisphere via a warm surface current toward the subpolar North Atlantic, where water sinks and returns southwards as a deep cold current. There is substantial evidence that the AMOC has slowed down ov...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | unknown |
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arXiv
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2307.16414 https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16414 |
| Summary: | The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) distributes heat and salt into the Northern Hemisphere via a warm surface current toward the subpolar North Atlantic, where water sinks and returns southwards as a deep cold current. There is substantial evidence that the AMOC has slowed down over the last century. We introduce a conceptual box model for the evolution of salinity and temperature on the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, subject to the influx of meltwater from the Greenland ice sheets. Our model, which extends a model due to Welander, describes the interaction between a surface box and a deep-water box of constant temperature and salinity, which may be convective or non-convective, depending on the density difference. Its two main parameters $μ$ and $η$ describe the influx of freshwater and the threshold density between the two boxes, respectively. We use bifurcation theory to analyse two cases of the model: instantaneous switching between convective or non-convective interaction, where ... |
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